Archive for the ‘People’ Category

Now that the football is complete we have a few days to go and visit friends and other parts of South Africa. So today we’ll be flying South African Airlines just under a 1000 miles to Cape Town located on the West coast of South Africa. I’ll post pictures and updates as they occur. Unless the airline try and charge us for an extra seat, we’ll be taking Chris jr with us.

Last night we attended the World Cup Final at Soccer City in Johannesburg. It felt special to be there, and the atmosphere is something I will never forget. To see Nelson Mandela was something special, and everyone in the stadium gave him the standing ovation he deserves, football players are often referred to as heroes by the media (falsely), but Nelson Mandela is a real hero, and a great inspiration for millions of people.

The game did not flow very well, and compared to football played in the 3/4th playoff game from the previous night was disappointing, but lets face it, if I was only interested in the football I could have stayed at home and watched it on the tele with instant replays, attending the games has been as much about the atmosphere as the game itself. The Dutch played dirty and unfortunately their tournament will probably be remembered that way.

As with our other games, we met people in the stands, took lots of photos and did our regular video introductions…

Alex from the train to Soccer City

Andy introduces the World Cup final (be sure to listen to my score prediction)

Yesterday we got to watch Germany vs Spain. Didn’t get access to a computer until I got back to Johannesburg so sorry for the delay. The best team won, Spain totally took Germany out of the game, no idea what the posession percentage was, but Germany couldn’t have had it much. Chris Jr continues to get lots of attention, and is very popular with the ladies, much like Chris Sr. There were some fans which missed the game because of issues with their flights, to them I say, what the hell were you thinking? Who leaves their travel to a flight that is supposed to get in a couple of hours early? So now we will have a historic World Cup final, with neither the Netherlands or Spain having won the competition. I have more friends that are Dutch, so I think I’ll be rooting for them.

We did see a person invade the pitch early on in the game, and unfortunately, the security didn’t beat the crap out of him as I had been told would happen. Oh well, I did video what happened.

Although did I mention we managed to get FIFA World Cup Final Tickets! Don’t worry, we’ll take Chris Jr.

Seriously though, it would be absolutely crazy of us to come all the way to South Africa and not do a Safari. So for the last couple of days between games we drove up to Pilanesburg Game Reserve. My poor camera didn’t know what had hit it, for the first time this trip I managed to flatten the battery from taking so many photos. They’re still uploading to Flickr, but you’ll be able to see the complete selection in an hour or so (internet is slow here) at the following URL

These animals are amazing, they’re massive, and it really comes home when you’re in a tiny Toyota Corolla rental with a Rhino facing you a few feet away. The car was in reverse and I was ready to floor it and lift the clutch if I had seen that Rhino twitch, fortunately the only thing twitching was Andy’s arsehole (so he says I didn’t check).

We stopped at one hide and were lucky enough see a couple of Elephants come for a drink and a Hippo go for a swim.

Pretty tired now, and need to get sleep for our drive to Durban tomorrow, where we will see Germany take on Spain. Who do you think will win?

This evening we saw Spain vs Paraguay. This game was almost as boring as the Portual vs Brazil game. Fortunately it did not need overtime and after hitting the post three times in about 4 seconds, the Spanish scored. Spain looked alot like England this evening, poor passing, poor final ball and not pushing forward very much.